Help! DC's primary school place withdrawn by council

[RidiculousFruitcake]

Background: I have recently separated from ex due to his violent behaviour and am going through divorce. Before I discovered his violent nature we moved house specially for DC's primary school application. The tenancy was from March 2015 for two years.

In April DC received primary school offer and I was very happy as DC got into a sought after school. However yesterday afternoon I received an email from council admissions saying they are withdrawing the offer as they received an anonymous tip off that DC and I don't live in the address we used for the application.

I was forced out of the family house (the house I rented together with ex and address for the application) as my ex assaulted me in November and then he changed lock to the house to stop me going back. He then took me to court for child arrangement issues in December. Long story short there were a few weeks when DC didn't see exactly due to complications but from March DC has been having regular contact with ex at the family house.

During all this time I wasn't living at family house I have paid rent/council tax/utility bills so DC can use the address for school application.

After we heard the primary school offer, ex has given notice to landlord of moving out of it, partly because we can't afford to rent it anymore and partly because landlord has sold the house. Ex moved out end of May. I have checked with council and it is OK to move once offer was made.

Council said in the email that, basically they has investigated and discovered that DC and I don't live in the address in the application forms since November so...

This is very upsetting and I have been thinking about it all night couldn't sleep. I feel that DC is being penalised for something completely out of our control i.e. I was subject to domestic violence.

I think I'm going to appeal - do you think DC stands a chance to get into the school? I'd be grateful for any advice!

LongChalk the op and her child needed to be living in the property on 15th January. Her intention to move back in or not means nothing.

Bloody hell there's some nasty responses here! I'm so sorry this happened OP and you're right the DC shouldn't have to suffer for his actions. You need some proper advice (from a DV charity or Citizens Advice maybe?). As others have said the council's hands may be tied though. As disappointing as it is, the most important thing is they're kept safe

Vashta the 'proper advice' would be that the OP's DC wasn't living at the address at the deadline day, so the application was at best in error, at worst fraudulent.

I do wish people on mumsnet wouldn't confuse true with unkind. You can't change facts just because they aren't nice.

You don't have to just say "you've committed fraud and were asking for it" though lougle. You can express regret for the OP's situation but still say that unfortunately the council's action is legally correct.

As prh says, the only (very small) hope is a sympathy vote from an appeals tribunal, but you'd still have to give them something to go on. What would be the negative consequences of your DC going to the school they were awarded rather than the school of your choice - given that what they've been through makes them more vulnerable? But "it's a better school and the one we've been awarded does worse in the league tables" is not an acceptable answer to that question.

I think you'll find that I did express regret for the OP's situation, but it is still correct to call it fraud. The OP deliberate maintained the address for the purpose of obtaining a school place, knowing that her DC didn't live there.

If you look at the timeline in the OP, we can only assume that the application was made prior to November. Then the period from November-March, the DC was neither living not having contact at the address. The period from March-April (when offers are made) he was having contact at the address.

The council has been told, correctly, that the child didn't live at that address.

OP, sorry to chuck this into the mix but do you have any indication of who reported this, if anyone, to the council? It might be the council just doing routine checks but it might also have been your ex as a way of getting back at you.....

Irrelevant to the situation op finds herself in, surely? Councils most certainly do check, there's no particular reason to suppose otherwise and it doesn't change a thing anyway.

Not aimed at you specifically lougle, but the first few posters were unnecessarily harsh and lacked any expression of sympathy. You can be honest and kind.

You can be honest and kind, but the OP moved out of the home between one and two months before the deadline for applications. We're not talking about a fine line here. At the time of the deadline, the DC wasn't even having contact with his father at the address. The OP knew full well that the address the LA were using to calculate his priority for a school place was not the address he was living at and was not going to be.

Why should people tiptoe around that and pretend that it is a really difficult situation to judge and 'nobody could call it', when it's clear as day that the OP used the old address to give her DS a better school?

Tbh, if she'd come on and said 'I knew it was wrong but I just didn't want my DS to be affected by my domestic situation after everything else', I for one would have much more sympathy and be far more inclined to spend more of my post telling her how much I could see why she had chosen to keep quiet about the move. However, what with appeal panels having to follow the law, the chance of winning should be zero, because the Code is very clear that a place can be withdrawn if fraudulently claimed and a deliberately misleading address is fraud.

OP has not been back and I'm not surprised.

Hopefully she will start a new thread to get advice on late applications and waiting lists.

Myself, Lougle, I have plenty of sympathy with a DV victim, whatever admin they have cocked up along the way. Hiding the thread now as it's well outside the spirit of MN.

Deliberately withholding information isn't cocking admin up .

OP I think is worth contesting.
the house you applied from was the family home for which you held a tenancy .You were taking urgent temporary refuge from an abusive partner and intended to move back in once things had been sorted out.

Where does the OP say she intended to move back in?

"You were taking urgent temporary refuge from an abusive partner and intended to move back in once things had been sorted out."

For the period that covers two months before the application deadline to present day?? You can't possibly expect a LA to accept that, especially as the tenancy has now been given up. The Ex partner basically gave notice as soon as the school offer came through in April and moved out in May.

I don't think posters filling in the gaps with what they might like the story to be is going to help the OP at all.

Telling the La that she was intending to move back in alongside all the other stuff she's posted is probably going to wipe the 'best case scenario, she made a mistake' off the table. I can't see how she can get away with that without lying to the LA and that will definitely go against her if they find out.

She's in an awful situation, but she needs to make it better not worse.

It could be that a new family has moved in to the house and applied for school places triggering the LA to realise that the OP doesn't live there.